


If It Kills You

by Daydreamnation (orphan_account)



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mafia AU, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:29:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2222361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Daydreamnation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mafia AU. The Gallagher and Milkovich crime families are technically at war, but all Ian can focus on is how much he wants to get Mickey Milkovich into bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clusters of flashing vibrant lights descended on the masses of dancing bodies all twirling, writhing, and gyrating to the same rhythm of an echoing bass. Ian was similarly illuminated as he stood near the entrance of Fairy Tale, surveying a kingdom of his own construction.

This place was one of the three night clubs that he had contrived and implemented all by himself back when he was only eighteen to serve as a demonstration to his family and his adversaries that he was mature, competent, and a clever entrepreneur—not someone to be underestimated despite his age. While the clubs served as beacons of Chicago nightlife, they also functioned as convenient locales for illicit business dealings: drug trafficking, arms trade, prostitution, contract killings, you name it. You just had to know where to look.

Margaret Gallagher, the famed and ruthless matriarch of the Gallagher crime family, had been incarcerated a few years ago due to a minor slip up in covering up a simple drug operation which ended up being a fatal error. It quickly became clear that her son Frank Gallagher was a useless alcoholic more invested in drinking out any bars that didn’t have people waiting to shank him when he passed out—which, at this point, was pretty much limited to The Alibi Room—than in enforcing their territory and assuming command. The only way for the Gallaghers to maintain control over their empire was to demonstrate that the rest of the family consisted of people that were dangerous to contend with. Ian supported this presentation of strength by establishing business enterprises and by heading initiatives to curb power struggles before they became serious by shutting down individuals who attempted to challenge the Gallaghers’ authority. That was mostly accomplished through orchestrating financial ruin or by using severe intimidation tactics that often involved missing—and, if necessary, lightly maimed—loved ones.

It had been difficult at first to convince the entire criminal sector of Chicago city to feel intimidated by two teens and a woman just barely out of her teens, particularly one who looked more like an office temp in her blouse and three inch heels than any sort of stand-in mob boss. People learned very quickly however, that while the Gallaghers were not inherently violent people, they were capable of being dangerous and perniciously manipulative when it came to maintaining control over their territory or protecting one of their own.

Once during their beginning stages, a Southwest Side gang had snatched Liam right out of Frank’s arms once when he’d taken his grandson to some pub to impress the “hot Latina mama”—Frank’s words—he’d wanted to fuck. It turned out the woman was the girlfriend of a local gang leader, who was pissed as hell that some old man was trying to paw at his girl and wrecked Frank’s face before leaving and bringing the kid with them. Fiona had been torn between sending them a thank you letter for rendering Frank temporarily incapacitated since she was furious that he used Liam like that and taking out every single gang member for walking away with her baby brother.

When their people finally located Liam, Fiona discovered that not only had they been neglecting to feed him, but also they’d left him in some shady bathtub in a housing project and forgot about him for several hours at one point. By the end of that adventure, Fiona had arranged for every responsible individual to be arrested for possession of more drugs than they’d ever actually seen in their entire lives except the gang leader, who was given the choice to either flee Chicago for good or begin operating under the Gallaghers. That was one of the more lenient endings. It quickly became clear that it was wisest to leave the Gallaghers alone, as they were ruthlessly efficient at everything from dealing with minor street skirmishes in their territory to strategizing the exploitation of multiple large corporations.

Fairy Tale Night Club was Ian’s most recent business endeavor and in his opinion his best accomplishment. It was called Fairy Tale, not as a cheeky nod to gay slang, but because that was what this venue was—ostensibly an escapist world of lively diversions and happy endings, but also a place containing within its depths a darker, Brothers Grimm-esque interpretation of reality.

Ian was casually making his way across the dance floor when someone pulled him in to dance and he went along with it, forgetting himself for a while in the anonymity of the crowd and rhythm of the music. He started grinding teasingly against the nameless, faceless body for several moments before deftly slipping away without a trace of regret, leaving the other person hanging. He heard the man shout after him, but the sound was easily lost among the loud roar of drums and synthesizers.

Moments later, he saw Lip leaning against a column on the edge of the dance floor and made his way towards him. He’d called earlier to tell Ian there was something important they needed to discuss. Ian figured it had something to do with Fiona’s current predicament.

“Save your stripper moves for when I’m not around. I don’t need to see that shit.” Lip pushed himself off the wall and started leading them over to one of the couches in a quieter area so that they could talk.

“Glad to see you too, asshole.” Ian shoved him lightly before pulling him back in for a side hug. “How’s living life on the straight and narrow working out? Your final year of academic hell, yeah?”

“Can’t exactly live a life of moral integrity when there are assfuck minions calling me in the middle of Thermo lecture, pleading for their lives because they massively screwed up a simple gunrunning op. Also I don’t know what world you’re living in if you think college life is straight and narrow. Half of those fuckers are more depraved than our entire payroll. Hell, we should just recruit straight out of Beta Delta Sigma.”

Ian had missed Lip, missed their easy banter and the way they’d consistently have each other’s backs. They still kind of did, but while Lip was still at college, it was harder to justify dragging him away from his work for anything less than an emergency—not that there was really a shortage of emergencies in the Gallagher household. Out of all of them, though, Lip was the only one who had a real chance of getting out of the criminal world. Ian was counting the days until he finally stopped rejecting those job offers from NASA, Google, AECOM, or everywhere relevant really.

When Peggy Gallagher was in charge, she’d made the decision to let her other two sons out of crime, but not Frank. Clayton and Wyatt lived nice, normal white picket fence lives, which left them vulnerable to criminals hoping to exact vengeance on Peggy. It didn’t matter though, because Peggy cared little enough for them that threats of harm to their person couldn’t be used to manipulate her. Frank, though, was the one son she actually liked which meant that Frank’s kids were invariably involved as well. Fiona was too entrenched in the criminal world to ever abandon that kind of life; she had been ever since she was little and knew nothing else. Carl, for whatever reason, inexplicably idolized their wayward father and seemed set on following his example. Meanwhile, Debbie was precocious in a way that suggested she would be intelligent enough to choose her own path so that remained to be seen.

Ian, though, Ian fucking thrived on all of it. The weapons, the adrenaline, the manipulation; it was like an intricately designed game with palpable real life consequences. Once when he was younger and undergoing a rebellious phase he’d tried to go legitimate by joining the army, but that lasted for a whole three months. Turned out he didn’t quite like guns, training, and obeying orders as much as he liked guns, training, and giving orders.

To be fair, Lip thrived on a lot of that stuff, too, but the more gruesome side of organized crime resulted in fairly disagreeable things like blackmail, instability, and a lower mortality rate, and someone in the Gallagher family should get to be exempt from that kind of life.

“I’m guessing you’re here to talk about Fiona. Have we located the witnesses yet?” Ian said.

Fiona was going on trial in an arms trafficking case in three weeks, and the most incriminating testimonies would be given by two witnesses who had been specially hired by the Milkovich family to infiltrate the Gallagher operations and accumulate enough evidence to implicate Fiona. That meant the witnesses would have to serve time themselves, but given that they were working for the Milkovich family, it was safe to assume they hadn’t really been given a choice.

Lip stuck the cigarette dangling between his fingers into his mouth, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out two photos of the same man, one a frontal shot and the other a profile. He tossed the pictures onto the table and leaned back on the couch, pulling his cigarette back out and blowing out a mouthful of smoke which slowly unfurled and dissipated into the dense club atmosphere.

“Is this one of them?” Ian asked. The man looked very nondescript, with brown eyes, dark blonde hair, and an all-too-average face. His only distinctive feature was the small burn mark that had taken away part of his right eyebrow.

“Yeah. Witness protection. Fernley, Nevada.”

“Fucking Nevada, seriously?” Ian said incredulously. “Whatever they’re paying him, we could pay higher.”

“Only if he’s dumb as fuck and doesn’t realize his ass is dead if he bails on the Milkoviches.”

“His ass is dead even if he doesn’t.” Ian said darkly.

“Look, just figure out what to do with him while I locate the second witness.” Lip put out his cigarette on the side of the table. “I’ve gotta peace. I have a midterm in about eight hours.”

Ian pocketed the photos Lip had tossed onto the table and watched as his brother disappeared into the fray, accidentally knocking shoulders with a man in a black wifebeater on his way out. The man turned around sharply like he wanted to pick a fight, but then seemed to remember himself and settled for exhaling harshly.

Ian was distracted from appreciating the man’s arms by someone in a blue silky dress shirt stumbling over to Ian’s couch, dropping down into the seat that Lip had vacated. He looked meaningfully at Ian, who raised an inquiring eyebrow at him. He was an older blonde man who looked vaguely familiar, but Ian didn’t care enough to try and place him in his memory.

“Thomas,” the newcomer drawled, raising his glass in greeting. “We were dancing earlier, but you disappeared on me.”

Well, that cleared up that mystery then.

Ian made a noncommittal noise and stared disinterestedly past the blonde back at the man Lip had walked into earlier. He had a really nice ass, which was attached to a pair of even nicer legs. Legs that would probably look particularly nice wrapped around Ian’s waist if he pressed that body up against a wall somewhere. He returned from his fantasy moments later to silently thank whoever invented form-fitting jeans.

“Hey, listen to me!” The blonde man suddenly growled, grabbing Ian’s arm to try and get his attention. A few of Ian’s men who had been watching quietly in the dark moved to take action, but Ian halted them with a subtle hand gesture. He could deal with a single drunk club patron; it was no cause to start a scene.

Ian turned to fix the older man with a steely glance before staring pointedly down to where the man was gripping his bicep. Even in his inebriated state, the other man noticed the dangerous glint in Ian’s eye and felt unusually nervous and threatened.

The older man withdrew his hand slowly but didn’t stop himself from slurring loudly, “What? Think I can’t afford you or some shit? Oh, like you’d give that lemur the time of day but not me? I work at fucking Goldman. I bet, I bet you regret it now, yeah? Bet you regret not letting me give it to you, fucking whore.”

It took Ian several moments to realize that lemur was in reference to Lip, that this man thought Lip had been soliciting his services. The idea made Ian’s mouth curl up in a combination of amusement and anger.

Before the rant, Ian had been prepared to let it go and dismiss the man’s transgressions on account of his inebriation, but the blonde had fucked himself over with those words. Ian made eye contact with two of his men, who were standing by waiting for his orders. He gave a curt nod and they came forward to stand over the drunk, one on each side of him, each gripping one shoulder to hold him down.

Ian glided smoothly on the couch over to the blonde and leaned forwards to speak into his ear, words almost too soft to decipher over the loud bass of the club music. “Let me make something very clear to you. I make more money than you could ever conceive of having, even in spite of your elitist little finance job that makes you think you’re on top of the fucking world. Not that earning more than you would be a difficult task starting this time tomorrow, because you won’t really be around to make much of anything.”

He trailed a finger slowly down the man’s cheek in a mockingly intimate manner. “Good night, _Thomas_.” With those parting words, the man was shoved out of the club, his jaw hardened in anger and disbelief.

Ian felt multiple sets of eyes on him and lit a cigarette, leaning back against the couch feeling irritated but self-satisfied. So much for not causing a scene.

He glanced up and made individual eye contact with each of the onlookers so that they glanced away guiltily, until his eyes locked with those of the man he’d been staring at earlier.

Ian froze and almost burned a hole through his shirt by letting his cigarette drop from his parted mouth.

There was no way he was seeing who he thought he was seeing.

Maybe the stress induced by long nights of researching everything there was to know about Mickey Milkovich and trying to dig up dirt on the man was getting to him. That was the only good explanation for why he thought he saw Milkovich sitting, as casual as a homophobic mob underboss could be, at a bar in a gay nightclub. A gay nightclub called Fairy Tale nonetheless.

To be honest, if Ian hadn’t spent the past week or so looking at countless images of Milkovich, attempting to piece together the man’s life story and ascertain his weaknesses, he probably wouldn’t have recognized him. The other man was usually seen dressed in immaculate suits that were probably worth more than the GDP of a small country with his hair slicked back, cigarette dangling from his mouth like he thought he was the lead man in a film noir gangster movie or Johnny fucking Cash.

Tonight, however, it seemed like Milkovich decided to let up on some of the posturing. His hair which looked softer without its usual styling products was parted to one side, some strands falling loosely just above his right eye. The tank top and jeans, though—Ian never thought he’d see him dressed so casually in public. And fuck if it wasn’t a look he couldn’t help but appreciate.

He instinctively searched Milkovich’s knuckles for his tattoos, the infamous F U C K   U - U P letters that put most of Chicago’s criminals that had any sense of self-preservation on edge, but his hands were conspicuously bare. He must have covered them up to be less noticeable then.

Ian briefly entertained the idea that Milkovich had come to the club seeking to start shit. Terry Milkovich wasn’t exactly unvocal regarding how he felt about Chicago’s gay, cocksucking, heathen population, and Ian would have expected Mickey Milkovich to take after his father in that regard. That line of reasoning didn’t quite make sense though, because people generally found out pretty early on if Mickey Milkovich had arrived to start shit. Subtlety was not a defining characteristic of the Milkovich family, and they definitely did not order drinks first unless it was to bash the glassware over someone’s head.

That only really left one other possibility, then. Judging by the way Mickey’s eyes were burning into Ian’s, there was a good chance his suspicions were correct.

Milkovich suddenly broke eye contact to down the shot that the bartender just slid towards him, knocking his head back and swallowing. Ian couldn’t help but trace the long line of his throat as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Milkovich wiped at the corner of his mouth with a thumb when he finished, wet lips parted to form a small “o,” which had no business being as obscene as it was.

Mickey Milkovich was into _men_. This, _this_ was the kind of information he’d been hoping to find in his countless hours of research.

Milkovich shifted his glance to Ian again, but the bartender, having traced his customer’s line of sight, threw his head back and laughed, causing Milkovich to turn away from Ian to aim a questioning look at him. Ian was struck by an irrational urge to fire that bartender for stealing his attention.

The bartender said something to Milkovich that caused his lips to dip into a small frown as he snuck another quick glimpse at the object of his attention. He scowled up at the bartender, mouth set determinedly in a hard line. He’d probably just been warned of Ian’s reputation for being simultaneously flirtatious and unattainable—and not in a hard to get way either, as Ian rarely actually left the club with anyone.

That was mostly because Ian was usually here on business, however. He came to watch, not play, and sometimes to meet with contacts. Occasionally he would be intrigued enough by someone to take them home, but that wasn’t very often compared to the amount of people who took interest in him. Because his charismatic personality was often accompanied by an almost enigmatic demeanor, he was regarded as particularly appealing in his elusiveness.

There was nothing a Milkovich appreciated more than a challenge however, which was something that had personally affected Ian on multiple occasions. A few lines of casual goading from an absolutely insignificant low-level gang member had once caused Mickey and Mandy Milkovich to initiate a complete overhaul of the Chicago drug trade, leading to an increase in the amount of territory their family controlled by over thirty percent. A little less than ten percent of that territory had been strategically wrested from the Gallaghers in fact. Their losses would have been even higher if Lip hadn’t sacrificed time during his finals reading period to launch a counteroffensive that shut down the Milkoviches instead of reviewing the principles of quantum electrodynamics, or whatever he was supposed to be doing.

This time though, Mickey Milkovich’s inability to refuse a challenge was a development that definitely worked in Ian’s favor. He felt his mouth turn upwards into a smirk. If he could just obtain unmistakable evidence of Mickey’s preferences, then he could either use it as a way to manipulate the other man’s actions or dismantle the Milkovich hierarchy by generating discord between Terry and his son. Hell, he could easily get Fiona out of jail with this piece of blackmail, and he wouldn’t even have to step foot in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, Nevada.

Ian signaled to one of his men. “Book me a room at The Palace,” he ordered. “One that’s respectable but not too conspicuously extravagant. Set up a hidden camera facing the bed and make sure it happens in the next fifteen minutes.”

The man dipped his head in acquiescence and disappeared into the darkness of the club.

When Ian looked back at the bar, he found that Milkovich was gone, his drink left unfinished on the table. Fuck, where the hell did he go? He could have sworn that Milkovich had been eyeing him with interest earlier. Ian scanned the room, but there was no trace of the other man.

He stood up, ready to interrogate the bartender about Milkovich’s whereabouts, but an unexpected breath of warm air too close to his ear startled him into reaching around and deftly twisting the arm of the intruder, spinning him around and pinning his arms behind his back.

“What do you want?” Ian snapped. He was already feeling irritated and impatient, so he hoped this person was prepared to deal with his unpleasant mood.

“Just wondering if you were planning on watching me take advantage of happy hour all fucking night, or if you wanted to do something a little more productive.”

Ian recognized that voice. It was Mickey fucking Milkovich, of fucking course it was.

To emphasize his point, Milkovich, whose back was pressed firmly against the front of Ian’s body as a consequence of Ian’s attempts to restrain him, shifted so that his ass lined up perfectly with Ian’s crotch and ground roughly backwards.

Ian’s mouth parted in shock as a sharp jolt of pleasure burned through his body. “Fuck,” he rasped.

“Yeah, that was the offer,” Milkovich replied, smirk evident in his voice. “Now, you wanna let go of me or do I have to break your wrists?”

Ian let him go, and Milkovich turned around, eyebrows raised in question. Ian looked at him for a long moment, considering the wisdom of his next move, before finally deciding to commit to his plan. He responded with a sharp nod.

“Come on, my hotel.” Ian said, brushing past him and leading them out of the club.

 

 

They were the only ones in the hotel elevator, but Milkovich, who hadn’t bothered with a false name and simply introduced himself as Mickey, stood as far away from Ian as possible and stared fiercely at the door, acting as if they had nothing to do with each other. The measures Mickey took to ensure that the public didn’t think they were together were excessive and downright unreasonable, and Ian was starting to get a little ticked.

Well, the Milkoviches weren’t the only ones who couldn’t resist a challenge, and Ian was feeling particularly malicious tonight. He stepped up to Mickey from behind and wrapped both arms tightly around his waist, scraping teeth lightly against the side of Mickey’s neck as the other man stiffened in surprise.

“The fuck are you doing,” Mickey hissed.

Ian ignored him to nip lightly at Mickey’s shoulder, licking and biting his way up the curve of his neck and stopping to suck on the underside of his jaw, smirking in satisfaction when Mickey helplessly tilted his neck a little to allow Ian access against his better judgment. Ian pushed his nose into Mickey’s hair and inhaled his scent—a combination of whiskey, sweat, underlying a subtle cologne that smelled prickly and earthy, maybe cedar wood or cypress.

“You smell nice,” Ian said with a sly grin, knowing his comment would be received with irritation.

“Thanks, it’s Eau de Stop Fucking Necking Me in a Public Elevator,” Mickey snapped.

“Wow, quite a long brand name. Terribly hard to remember,” Ian added, sucking another hickey to prove his point. “They should look into hiring a new marketing team.” The vivid red bite mark was especially prominent against the pale white of Mickey’s skin. Ian brushed his tongue lightly against it in apology and Mickey bit his lip to stifle a groan, which was irritating because Ian worked for that; he deserved to hear it. He reached under Mickey’s shirt and scraped a nail across a nipple almost vengefully, and was rewarded by a sharp hiss and shudder that Mickey couldn’t quite suppress.

They were distracted and failed to notice when the elevator came to a stop, the doors opening to reveal a couple in their thirties or forties wearing business suits. The couple looked surprised and judgmental, probably because all of this was happening at an upscale hotel primarily for people who needed a place to stay during business conferences.

Ian buried his face in Mickey’s neck and smirked as Mickey stared them down.

“What? Are you fucking confused? This would be an elevator, a novel invention that allows people to travel up and down between platforms of various heights.” Mickey said, voice dripping with condescension.

The couple were starting to look indignant, and Ian interjected before it began to escalate. “Sorry, my partner’s really drunk. It’s been a rough week, with the uh—NASDAQ, you know,” he said, waving a vague hand and shoving Mickey out of the elevator.

The couple seemed to accept his explanation—either that or they decided they didn’t really care—and nodded stiffly, getting into the elevator and shutting the doors behind them.

“The NASDAQ’s actually doing pretty well.” Mickey felt the need to inform him, probably just to be a contrary asshole.

Ian narrowed his eyes at Mickey and swiped open the lock to his room, pushing the door open to survey his surroundings. It was a very spacious modern suite with a large king bed, a couch and small coffee table near the foot of the bed, and tall glass windows which faced the Chicago skyline. He scanned the tops of the dressers and tables as well as the corners of the room for a hidden camera, and—there. He found it, peeking behind the coffee maker on a table facing the side of the bed. It blended in with the sleek black plastic of the machine, imperceptible to anyone who wasn’t actively looking for the device. Perfect.

As soon as the door slammed shut behind them, Mickey was on him, slamming him against the wall with one hand gripping Ian’s throat.

“What the fuck?” Ian shouted. He’d half anticipated Mickey to be aggressive with his partners given his reputation, but not to this extent, not physically violent.

“What do you want from me, _Gallagher_?” Mickey said lowly, eyes flashing.

Ian inhaled sharply. Shit, Mickey _knew_. There was always the chance that Mickey would recognize him, but Ian had guessed it’d be slim given that he’d always made it a point to be discreet; it was his name that held power and influence, not his appearance. If Mickey recognized him, that meant he’d done as much research on Ian as Ian had done on him.

Ian refrained from reacting visibly at the revelation. It was fine; everything was still salvageable. Mickey knew who he was, sure, but he couldn’t predict Ian’s intentions.

“Listen, Gallagher.” Mickey growled, but released his neck. “If you’re here to try and exploit the fact that I occasionally fuck men, then you’re about to find out first hand that liking what I like doesn’t make me a fucking weak little bitch. I’m sure you’re aware that I have some of the most depraved criminals in Chicago on my payroll, half of who can successfully carry out a hit in under six hours and at least two snipers capable of hitting a target more than half a mile away. In fact, cross me and you can guarantee that rest of your family will find themselves staring at prison bars identical to the ones Fiona will be spending quality time with soon.”

Ian clenched his fists as he felt a burning rush of anger surge through him. He didn’t get to where he was in the criminal world by reacting to threats with fear. In retaliation he grabbed Mickey by the shoulders and spun them around so that the other man was the one with his back to the wall, stepping closer and further into Mickey’s personal space so that he had to tilt his head upwards to look at Ian, emphasizing their size difference. Ian was taller and better trained in hand to hand. Mickey would without question outmatch him if they’d brought guns to this fight, but physical fighting was Ian’s arena.

“Don’t.” Ian said in a deceptively calm voice, only his eyes betraying fury. “Threaten me. You’ve threatened me and my family enough. I’m only going to say this once. We’re not afraid of you, we’re not afraid of Terry, and we’re especially not afraid of your family’s overreliance on brash, outdated brute-force tactics.”

Ian exhaled sharply before continuing in a softer, more intimate tone. “Come on, Mickey. There’s a reason you left with me tonight.” He cupped a hand around the back of the other man’s neck and ran a gentle thumb across the marks he’d left there. “You knew who I was, and you came anyway. The way you were staring at me back at that bar—that wasn’t just animosity or curiosity or even simple acknowledgement.”

Mickey broke eye contact to stare at a point past Ian’s shoulder, like he couldn’t help his expressiveness and had to conceal his thoughts by looking away. Ian brought the hand resting on Mickey’s neck to his chin, gripping lightly and turning his head to try and return his gaze. Mickey knocked his hand away angrily but stared back at Ian nonetheless, expression defiant.

“You asked me what I want from you,” Ian said, lowly. “But I think you already know.”

Mickey still looked furious and for a second he thought Mickey was going to backhand him, but to Ian’s surprise, he merely shoved him aside and yanked the hotel door open vehemently, letting it slam behind him on the way out.

He didn’t even look back at Ian once.

The echo of the door slam continued resounding in his head long after Mickey had gone. No one had ever dared walked out on Ian Gallagher like that before, especially not after rejecting whispered promises of sexual intimacy. It left an unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach, and Ian found himself determined to finish what was started and exact his penance.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mild depictions of torture.

It was starting to become apparent to Mickey that they were no longer on their way to Petro Antonovych’s condo. Petro was responsible for managing a portion of the family’s tax fraud schemes, and meetings at his River North residence happened regularly enough that Mickey recognized the route that his driver Victor typically followed. For the first ten minutes he assumed they were taking a different route to avoid traffic, but once they drove south past Grand Avenue he realized they weren’t going to head back up to their destination.

Even though it didn’t matter that they going to be late since Mickey never showed up on time for meetings with subordinates as a reminder of their power differential, the one thing he hated most was incompetence.

“Victor, where the fuck do you think we’re going? Picking up a fucking fruit basket for Petro from the South Side?” Mickey snapped.

The driver didn’t respond, acting like he hadn’t heard anything. Victor was usually almost creepily polite, to the point where his stiffness made him sound forced and insincere, but he had come highly recommended by a trusted source and he’d been consistently reliable so far. His behavior now was surprisingly rude.

“Stop the fucking car.” Mickey snarled, pissed at being ignored. Victor still didn’t say a word.

Quickly recognizing that something was wrong, Mickey reached for his gun, but before he could get a grip on the handle his bodyguard reacted immediately, grabbing his wrists and deftly binding them together with a zip tie, which—what the hell? Tony— _Tony_ was in on this as well.

The only reason Mickey was so rapidly overpowered was because he’d been caught extremely off guard by this betrayal. Tony had been with their family since back when Terry and their mother had still been happily frolicking through the hideous fields of Chicago’s sketchiest parks. Hell, Tony fucking took Mickey to Disney Land when he just was a kid to celebrate his first killing.

“What the fuck? How long?” He demanded, doing his best to ignore the feeling in his chest that threatened to close his throat and instead replace it with cold, hard fury.

“The last two days.” Victor finally deigned to reply now that he had nothing left to hide. “We got some info that made us think it’d be good to swap alliances. Shit’s going down soon and we’re not taking our chances.” He smirked through the rearview mirror. “Plus, they’ve probably got better wages and higher employee satisfaction.”

“You promised your loyalty.” Mickey spat, eyes hard. “Do you know what that means?”

“All right, calm down, Al Pacino. Let’s be realistic here. This is capitalist America. The only loyalty here is brand loyalty.”

“You don’t get it, do you? ‘Course not, you’ve been in the business less than a year. Loyalty is the one thing that matters most. You think anyone’s gonna trust you knowing you betrayed the previous employer for a higher salary?”

“They can trust that as long as they’re giving me the biggest paycheck, I’m still their man.”

“This is capitalist America.” Mickey said, mocking his earlier words. “They don’t need you. Cheap labor is everywhere and Chicago unemployment is at eight percent.”

Victor gave a nonchalant shrug and didn’t reply, continuing to drive them further and further south. At some point, Tony moved to slip a blindfold over his eyes. Mickey couldn’t imagine what they discovered that would make them switch alliances so quickly. There was nothing he could think of that would potentially cause such a dramatic shift in the power balance.

Mickey felt the car drive over a stretch of gravelly road for a while before eventually coming to a stop. They led him into a large echoing space through what sounded like a set of heavy metal doors. The air around them smelled stale and vaguely damp—probably an abandoned warehouse then. No points for creativity there.

They brought him into another room and closed the door behind them, then proceeded to push him to the floor and tie him to a large round column. The hard concrete was cold against his back and legs. It was fine for now, but the air would definitely grow chillier as night approached and all he was wearing was a thin button down for a meeting that never happened.

“Hey, listen. Mickey.” That was Tony’s voice. “Don’t try to be tough, okay? Just give ‘em what they want.” There was the sound of steps coming closer, and then a heavy hand resting on his shoulder.

Mickey felt a bitter laugh escape him. “Fuck you too.” The hand on his shoulder squeezed briefly and then two sets of footsteps retracted, followed by the hollow thud of the door slamming shut.

Alone. He was alone in darkness. No one had dared to capture Terry Milkovich’s youngest son before now. He’d been trained to withstand torture, but somehow being in the actual situation didn’t quite feel the same. The smallest sound, the slightest echo, made him jump or twitch. He wanted the pain to begin just so he didn’t have to deal with the restlessness of constant anticipation.

An undetermined amount of time later he heard a new, sharper set of footsteps approach and felt someone rip off his blindfold. He took a minute to let his eyes adjust and found himself in a small room with stacks of empty crates and a few rusty chairs. A bland looking man wearing slacks and a finely tailored dress shirt was sitting directly in front of Mickey, back ramrod straight against the back of the chair with arms draped over the corroding metal of the chair’s arms. His eyes, which were unsettlingly pale even in the dim lighting, were fixed on Mickey, unmoving, assessing. He had no tattoos, no scars, no indicators that he was someone people hired to extract information.

When he spoke his voice was deep, his tone detached and matter-of-fact. “I could threaten you for a while, maybe say something about doing this the easy way or the hard way, but that seems rather unnecessary. You seem like a man who appreciates getting straight to the point, Mr. Milkovich, so let us proceed straight to the point. Then we can get to the negotiations after—or concessions, rather, on your end.”

Mickey hated his attitude. “The fuck do you want from me? And why did you come dressed for a fucking job interview?”

The man looked unfazed and simply leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped.

“So tell me. Where is the location of the second witness?”

That was information only relevant to the Gallaghers. This guy was theirs then. “That? You want to know _that?_ ” Mickey asked, lost. “ _Why?_ ” It made no fucking sense for the Gallaghers to go to such extremes to find this information. Capturing and torturing someone of Mickey’s rank was a move that was guaranteed to lead to an escalation of what was currently just a moderate conflict. This could be cause for full out war, resulting in dead bodies scattered all across Chicagoland.

Yes, there had been the threat of Fiona getting convicted, but it wasn’t as if Mickey had actually intended to carry out that out; it was just an intimidation tactic—a warning to the Gallaghers to stop strategically allying with weaker, less prominent families in a way that was quickly starting to become a threat to the Milkovich family. Threatening Fiona in turn, while operating within the law nonetheless, was still working inside a certain boundary of civility, or as civil as the mob was capable of being. It didn’t make sense for the Gallaghers to take such dramatic measures in return. They were clever enough to come up with other solutions, unless—unless maybe they didn’t want to. Unless escalating tensions were exactly what they needed, and it actually was part of a larger plot to dismantle the Milkovich family like they’d feared.

“The one tied to the floor doesn’t get to ask questions,” his interrogator replied evenly, before striking Mickey hard across the jaw. “And I don’t like repeating myself.”

Mickey genuinely didn’t know where the second witness was; that arrangement was under government control and it didn’t matter anyway, because the witness was under orders to not actually contribute anything damning in a court of law.

“Motherfuc—my father will have all of you dead within a week.” Mickey growled.

“Tough words for the gay son of Chicago’s most infamous fagbeater. I’m sure your father isn’t going to regard you so highly once he finds out about your preference for dick.”

“Nothing that you can prove,” Mickey said derisively. There had been a few accusations and rumors over the years, but Terry was too much of a bigot to ever even consider the idea that any of his sons could be anything less than perfectly straight.

 “Not even with media evidence?”

Mickey froze.

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t do bullshit.”

“Gallagher. Ian Gallagher did this?” Mickey said through clenched teeth.

“Not directly, no.” The interrogator replied, and his emotionless expression suddenly morphed into a smirk. “But that redheaded prostitute you spent an entire night calling Ian did.”

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, lazily scrolling through his pictures with a sharp grin. “I’m quite partial to this photo in particular, the one where you’re all sprawled out against his sheets, back arched, probably moaning shamelessly like a wanton—“

“Shut the fuck up, you fucking piece of fucking shit!”

“—slut.” He finished. Mickey desperately wanted to punch that sneer off his face. He had to admit that hadn’t been his finest hour. It had been a moment of weakness, a few days after his first encounter with Gallagher. He found himself unable to stop thinking about the redhead, about his infuriating, perpetual smirk and the way it felt to have the warmth of Ian’s body trapping Mickey’s against his own. He thought he could fuck it out of his system by requesting someone from an escort company that was on the slightly shadier side, one that didn’t require signing confidentiality agreements. He’d assumed that he would feel better about not leaving a paper trail. In retrospect that hadn’t been the smartest move.

Mickey was usually so good at being careful, never sticking around longer than was needed to get off and always making sure that someone would need to bring in an entire fucking forensics department to prove that he’d ever been there with another man. He would never have allowed himself to stay the night, either. He’d been distracted and he messed up. There was no one but himself to blame.

“So. Now that you fully comprehend the situation, maybe you feel like telling me: Where. Is. The. Other. Witness?”

“I don’t fucking know, okay?” Mickey said truthfully. He realized there was no chance his interrogator would believe him though.

“Yeah, I didn’t think it would be that easy.” The other man sighed, reaching over and gently pulling Mickey’s right hand towards him, before abruptly pushing the index and middle fingers backwards roughly and breaking them. Mickey bit off a scream.

He looked at Mickey expectantly for a long moment and when it became clear that no answers were forthcoming, he slammed the injured hand against the concrete column and ground the broken fingers into the wall with the heel of his shoes, drawing a choked cry out of his victim.

Amidst the haze of pain, a terrible thought suddenly occurred to Mickey.

_Maybe no one was coming for him._

Terry certainly wasn’t going to, and while his siblings had always been protective of him, it was all before any of them knew that he was gay. They were all collectively terrified of Terry as well, and it wasn’t like they’d been all prancing around at GSA meetings. Mandy had always had his back, but she never figured out how to stand up to Terry even when she was being abused, so she was probably going to sit around feeling upset and conflicted, and maybe, just maybe she was going think he was disgusting when she found out, too.

Mickey’s entire life was falling to shit, and it was all because of one stupid fucking person.

 

 

Ian was still jet lagged from his flight from Nevada when he got Jimmy’s call.

“You did _what_?” Ian shouted into his phone in the middle of a busy diner. He dug his nails so hard into the table that they made little crescents in the wood. The waitress that was about to set his eggs on the table jumped a little at his outburst.

“Don’t tell Fiona yet,” Jimmy pleaded. “Let me get the information and fix everything, and then I’ll tell her on my own, I promise.”

“Not a fucking chance.” Ian growled, his heart pounding so loudly in his chest that he could barely hear anything else. “We’re meeting at my place in ten minutes, and there is no way in hell Fiona’s going to be absent for this conversation. You fucked up, Jimmy. You made decisions that went beyond your purview, and Fiona might never forgive you for it.”

God, Ian couldn’t fucking believe it. He was shaking. He tried to convince himself it was just anger at Jimmy’s audacity, but he knew it was mostly anger on Mickey’s behalf. He’d spent the past two weeks replaying his interaction with Mickey in his head, getting increasingly livid and sexually frustrated with each thought, but the moment he heard that Jimmy had ordered Mickey to be tortured and interrogated, the anger vanished, replaced with a profound sense of dread and anxiety. He was stunned by the intensity of his own concern for someone he barely knew, someone he’d met only once—a rival nonetheless. Still, there was something about Mickey that invited a strange feeling of protectiveness that he couldn’t quite justify.

He threw two fifties on the table and walked out of the diner without bothering to wait for the check. He hadn’t even gotten to eat his breakfast.

 

 

Fiona was predictably livid when she found out.

“You can’t just fucking do whatever the hell you want without consulting me first! You’re not even part of the fucking family! Who gave you the goddamned right?” She shouted.

“I was just trying to do what was best for you, Fiona,” Jimmy said, trying his best to soothe her rage. “I don’t want to see you behind jail bars.”

“Well you did a damned good job of that, you fucking idiot. Now we’re in the middle of something we can’t control and there’s a good chance that we’re completely fucked. This is grounds for a fucking war, Jimmy! How stupid can you get?”

“The last thing Terry Milkovich is going to do is start a war over his fairy of a son. Mickey Milkovich was a dead man the second he found out anyway.”

Ian felt his fists clench in anger at that remark. That was an idiotic presumption, and anyone who understood the Milkovich family at all would realize that.

Fiona snarled. “Do you know that for sure, Jimmy? Do you? Did you ever stop to calculate whether Mickey or Terry holds more sway in the Milkovich family? Did you even think to consider that the outcome of that power struggle might not be the most obvious one? Did you stop to fucking think about anything other than your goddamned hero complex?”

Fiona took a deep breath before continuing her rant.

“Just because you have some rank in the Portuguese mafia doesn’t mean you understand how the hell the Chicago families operate. Just because you think you _care_ about me doesn’t mean you get to try and run our fucking lives to the ground!”

Jimmy’s face revealed that it was finally starting to dawn on him that he’d made the wrong choice.

“Now we’re going to have to salvage the situation and minimize the damages _you_ caused by being an overconfident bastard. The first thing you’re doing is calling your attack dog and telling him to let Milkovich go.”

“What, now?” he asked. Fiona raised an expectant brow and stared him down until he picked up his phone and started dialing.

Ian felt his muscles tense with consternation. If Mickey was fucking dead—

“He’s not answering his phone. That’s literally never happened before.” Jimmy eventually said. He grabbed his keys off the coffee table and headed out the door. “I’m going to take care of this, I promise.”

“The hell you are. I’m coming with you.” Ian said tightly, tone booking no room for argument.

Jimmy gave him a long searching look, which was followed by a slowly dawning expression of understanding, and he fixed Ian with a knowing smirk. “So apparently this is a two way street. That makes this more interesting."

“Makes what more interesting?” Ian shot back. He didn’t like the deliberate crypticness of that statement.

 “This.” Jimmy tossed him his mobile across the roof of the car before getting into the driver’s seat. “Passcode’s five seven four eight. Enjoy scrolling through the photo gallery.”

Ian began flicking through the images as Jimmy started up the car.

License plate. License plate. Selfie. Fake passport. Apartment door—

—Mickey Milkovich choking around someone’s cock, eyes closed, dark lashes dipped down in concentration. The vantage point indicated it was clearly taken by the person by the person on the receiving end. Ian almost dropped the phone.

He was abruptly hit by a heady rush of arousal and something darker—an unfamiliar feeling that coursed through his veins and settled in his chest where it continued to burn and writhe.

It was a shocking picture, sure, but that still didn’t quite explain the odd comment earlier. “Your point?” he asked.

“If you’re still asking that, you haven’t scrolled far enough.”

At that, Ian continued to flick through the photos. There was just more of the same, as well as photos of Mickey asleep tangled in someone else’s sheets.

And then all the breath rushed out of him when he found the picture that Jimmy must have been referencing. The mysterious other man had been absent from the previous shots, but in this one he was wrapped around a sleeping Mickey from behind, head raised to stare straight into the camera with a mischievous smirk. He looked disturbingly similar to Ian himself.

A question suddenly came to him unbidden. Did Ian look like the man in the picture, or did the man in the picture look like Ian?

“Who is that?” He asked, not quite fully able to hide the stiffness in his voice.

“Some prostitute.” Jimmy replied flippantly. “Not named Ian, although Mickey apparently seemed to want to believe otherwise.”

The reaction Ian felt at that was almost too overwhelming, and he chose to mentally file away all this information for later use. For now though, they had more important things to deal with. He discussed with Jimmy the logistics of their situation for the rest of the car ride, deliberating on how they could diplomatically handle the fallout until they finally stopped in front of an abandoned distribution center.

When they found the room Mickey was supposedly being held in, the first thing Ian saw was a patch of dried blood on a pillar wrapped with chains. He felt his heart stop for half a moment, until he came to the realization that Mickey was no longer here.

Who was here, however, slumped behind a stack of crates, was the man who had been assigned the task of torturing their prisoner.

Jimmy went over and bent down to examine the body, mouth drawn in a grim line. “Looks like he’s been dead for at least two days.”

“How do you know?”

“The body discoloration and absence of rigor mortis.”

Ian shot him a questioning look.

“I got half an MD in forensic pathology before I got bored.” Jimmy shrugged.

Ian stepped closer to the body to investigate, which was when he spotted the crinkled note tucked into the breast pocket of the man’s blood-stained dress shirt. He cautiously plucked it out and unfolded it.

There were words scrawled in blood, which had oxidized over time to a dark brown color.

_There’s no going back_

_It begins here, gallagher_

 

The writing was followed by an embellished calligraphic letter M, signifying the family that left it. The message was a declaration of war—a courtesy almost, since most families just started shooting. It seemed like the Milkovich siblings had found their brother, and they weren’t pleased at all.

The situation was rapidly degenerating into an uncontrollable chaos.

 

 

When they arrived back at Ian’s condo, they found Fiona sitting at the table with a bottle of liquor, brows drawn together wearily.

“Terry Milkovich is dead,” she told them as they walked in, her voice remaining cool even as she downed shot after shot. “Mandy Milkovich shot him in the head.”

Ian had no idea how to begin responding to that.

“Our sources say he went mad when the Milkovich siblings brought Mickey home and he grabbed his shotgun and stormed up to Mickey’s room where he was still unconscious. Mandy tried to stop him, Terry smacked her out of the way, and she shot him point blank through the forehead, just like that.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ian muttered.

“And you know what the best part is? That means now they have a new head of family. The one that we just spent a good few days torturing.”

“Fuck.” Ian ran his hands through his hair. “I hope you’re planning on sharing some of that liquor.”

Fiona held it out to him wordlessly.

He finished the entire bottle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cut this new yorker some slack regarding chicago geography, kk? :)

**Author's Note:**

> unbetaed, sorry for any mistakes


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